Gym Class Heroes, the rap/rock foursome that claims track eight of the “Snakes on a Plane” soundtrack with their MySpace-romance groove “New Friend Request,” has a half-fro frontman named Travis McCoy who thinks himself just as cool as Samuel L. Jackson. It’s a stretch, but if he means cool in that dopey I-just-ran-two-laps-around-the-track, left-a-rotting-brown-bag-lunch-in-my-locker-for-a-week kind of floppy grammar school way, it makes some sense. He and the rest of the boys do have a lot of that going on — and I can dig it.

These East Coast silly-hoppers spent their school days in the city of Geneva, the tame part of New York — think “lake trout capital of the world” over ghetto drive-bys. Their beat machine is three men strong, but it’s not the soundboard-cramped sausage fest you’re thinking of. Instead, the youngsters line up behind guitar, bass and drums to pump out unfussy pop-rock melodies so repetitive they could easily pass as authentic hip-hop computer loops.

Needless to say, GCH are no Roots — in fact, they fit in much more comfortably with simple-minded teen pleasers like AFI, the Academy Is… and Fall Out Boy (band poster child Pete Wentz originally hooked them up with a Fueled by Ramen record deal).

Yep, it’s true. The mainstream emo kid can finally add some hip-hop (if you can call it that) to his playlist. “And I remember, I seen her ass in Early November/ On a Thursday, Taking Back Sunday for a refund,” raps McCoy to the drippy sing-song melody of “Taxi Driver,” GCH’s ode to every bad emo-punk band I can think of. Even when he’s not dropping literal references, he still manages to cop their topics: popping pills to ease the pain, ex-girlfriend drama and new girlfriend butterflies — “Cupid’s Chokehold” lays down the modern cheese of “She’s even got her own ringtone/ If that ain’t love then I don’t know what love is” with a Supertramp “Take a Look at My Girlfriend” live sample.

Even though the Heroes sometimes drop to such soundalike lows as Crazytown, Linkin Park and the worst of the Black Eyed Peas, their highs often compensate. Debut album Papercut Chronicles manages some complexity through sporadic drums on “Pillmatic,” while “The Queen and I,” track one of GHC’s 2006 sophomore album As Cruel as Schoolchildren, slaps some funk around with its RJD2/Aceyalone danceability.

For obvious reasons, Gym Class Heroes would probably find a more enthusiastic audience at a high school homecoming dance, but are we really so mature? They’ll just have to replace those MySpace rhymes with an ode to Facebook’s stalking-for-dummies “mini-feed” if they want to connect to us collegiate types.

Boss Ditties:

“The Queen and I,”

“New Friend Request (Hi-Tek Remix)”